The Dark Side
by KilianaFelagund
Summary: Tag scene to the episode "Dark Side of the moon." - 'A cloud swept across the sky and he laughed bitterly at the world. Even the moon had left him, now. Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed' - Warning tags inside. No Slash. Hurt!Dean Comforting/Worried!Sam


So this is a tag to the episode **"Dark Side of the Moon."** I don't really like how the show handled the brother's relationship in season five with the whole vessels and looking for god stuff and Dean not taking care of Sam and Sam not taking care of Dean.

**Warning Tags**: there is some language, but not bad. And there is a section with slightly suggestive elements due to a really nasty ghost. Nothing at all bad.

Of course, **Tag**: for mental torture and despair, and suicide themes.

If you remember the scene towards the end of the episode where **Sam and Dean go back home and confront Mary**… you're all set. I loved and hated that scene.

Thank you to **Angellec** for the beta and the idea!

If Dean seems out of character at first, keep reading. There is a reason.

**~Kiliana**

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><p>Dean's eyes flew open in the dark silent room. He was choking. suffocating. He struggled to this feet, tripping on the lousy motel bed covers, and practically reeled towards the front door. The floor tilted crazily and his face abruptly smashed into the carpet that had seemingly replaced the wall.<p>

_The pain, well. What can you say about your skin bubbling off?_

Dean moaned and shoved himself roughly back to his unsteady feet, wrenching the door practically off its hinges in his haste to get to the clear fresh air. His skin was crawling. His heart burning. His eyes blinded by a sheen of glass.

_But the smell was so… You know, for a second I thought I'd left a pot roast burning in the oven. But… it was my meat._

Shuddering in the chilly night air, Dean hit his knees half way across the parking lot all strength draining away like water through a sieve. A cloud swept across the sky and he laughed bitterly at the world. Even the moon had left him, now.

_Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed? Mommy. _

He could see her burning on the ceiling, her face frozen in a soundless scream. No one ever knew that he had seen her too. It was his secret – painful in its relentlessness – that had haunted his dreams for years.

_Daddy. _

John was there, lying in the cold hospital bed as Dean rounded the corner leaning on his brother. A jolt of pain wracked Dean's body. Even then his knew the sacrifice that had been made, even while he desperately tried to explain the coincidence away.

_Even Sam._

Sam slammed the door. Dean only managed to shake himself out of his stupor when the frame rattled in the walls and John bellowed a violent curse. Stumbling after his brother, the bleeding gash in his side ripping back open as he collapsed to the pavement. Sam hadn't turned around. He stood at a distance and begged Dean to go back inside without even turning back to say goodbye. Dean choked out a strangled farewell and a blessing or sorts on Sam's departure and Sam had burst into tears and fled. For hours Dean lay there, bleeding silently from both his body and his soul before John found him and lugged him back to bed.

"But Sam came back." He whispered hoarsely to the world at large. But even as he said it, his heart was clouded with doubt. "Sam won't leave me. He won't." he turned his face to the glassy wavering sky. "He came back!" he yelled brokenly. Still it rang hollow and the moon remained hidden.

_You ever ask yourself why? Maybe it's not them. Maybe, it's you._

Dean's forehead met the pavement as he crumbled in on himself. Dad had left, not two days after Sam had walked out, Dad had left him bleeding in that crappy rotten motel room with the orders to call when he was in fighting condition. He called as soon as he could stand longer than ten minutes and Dad hadn't even asked, just gave him a clipped order and hung up. Dean had stopped every thirty minutes to puke his guts that hunt and landed himself in an ER due to blood loss, dehydration, and hypothermia. Dad had never known. Jim later told him that the first thing his father had done was check on Sam and scout out the campus. Hah. Figures. After all, Sam was clearly John's favorite.

Dean struggled back to his feet and staggered back to the motel room. Still sacked out due to some pain pills he had popped for his headache, Sam didn't even acknowledge him.

_Maybe, it's you._

_It's you! _

She was right. It was him. Everyone he touched, everyone he knew, everyone died. On autopilot from years of relentless training no matter his physical condition, Dean packed his bag with the silence of a cat despite his violently shaking hands. He scrawled something down on a scrap pf paper and placed it by his brother, he couldn't have told you what he had written if he had tried.

"M'sorry." He whispered. "It's better this way, now you don't have to feel guilty for living your life." He whispered before dropping the keys by the note and stumbling out.

SPN

Something stirred deep in Sam despite the sleeping meds and he began the torturous fight back towards consciousness. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. He clutched at consciousness like a drunk to a railing and hauled himself towards the light. When he opened his eyes, he was alone.

"Dean!" he shouted before seeing the note. "No! no, nonononono! DEAN!" he leapt out of bed and flung open the door. There sat the car, gleaming in the eerie moonlight. But his elusive brother was nowhere to be seen.

He read the note one more time, searing the shaky words permanently into his brain before crumpling it in his fist.

_She was right. Everyone leaves, Go back to school Sammy, and take care of Baby._

He smashed his fist through the paper thin wall in despair.

What had gone wrong? They walked away from that motel a few days before after the "heaven" fiasco and Dean seemed to be handling things fine. Sam had even agreed to a small side trip to put back down a restless spirit. Dean took a light hit, Sam got a two-by-four to the skull, but they were fine.

Sam ran a panicky hand through his bed tousled hair and ran across the parking lot. No Dean could be seen on the road… No Dean.

"Damn it!" he cursed and raced back to the room. Dean never left, _never _cried and those wrinkled smudges on the note were _definitely _tears!

No bad food? Check. Sam had driven part of the way, so not overly fatigued. Check. The ghost perhaps. It had been a suicide originally. Her daughter had died from the pox and her husband left her in his grief so she jumped a bridge. But she was still attached to the house and then they renovated it, they had woken her. Easy as pie – in and out in a single night.

Sam flung open the journal and reread his notes. He had missed something. No. nothing.

He wrenched open the computer and began to type. Flipping open his phone he hit speed dial. Dean's phone buzzed on the counter.

"Shit!" he snapped and dialed another number.

"Bobby, I need help. It's Dean – no I don't really know what's wrong, Dean left. He left me a note saying goodbye and he left me the car and his phone. – I'm scared shitless Bobby, that is _not _like Dean! – um, we just finished a hunt, it was the suicide in Vermont, Nora Sawford leapt off bridge after husband leaves and child dies. – Yeah that's the one. Could she had done something to my brother? – No, the only people affected long term are people with insecurities about abandonment, and who are in emotional distress at the time. Yeah I got all that. – no not normally like Dean, but I'm afraid… – Thanks Bobby! I'll call I promise." Sam shut the phone and buried his head in his hands.

_Only people with insecurities about abandonment. _

"_Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed?" _Fake (he seriously hoped) Mary's words rang like a gun shot through his head. Every word he ever said. "I'm here Dean, for now." "I can't promise I won't go when this is over." There were so many time. He had left for college. He left to find Dad. He left with Ruby. He always left Dean and all Dean had ever done was hold it in and watch him go.

He could hear his brother's pleas. _"Don't go, Sammy." "All I want is for us to be a family again."_

Sam banged his head against the table. Obviously Dean had insecurities about people leaving. THEY ALWAYS DID! But Mary was wrong. It wasn't Dean, Dean was the reason they stayed. Dean was the peacemaker, the glue, the chink that kept them coming back.

Mary was so wrong.

And Sam had failed to give Dean a reason to disbelieve her.

It was just their luck that the one time he was still reeling over a confrontation he didn't honestly believe to be a lie despite his bravado, they were faced with a ghost that managed to slip through his walls and tear him down from the inside.

_You don't remember, do you? You ran away on my watch. I looked everywhere for you. I thought you were dead. And when Dad came home… _Dad had what, Dean? What had Dad said? Done?

_Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This? This is the night you ditched us for Stanford, isn't it? This is your idea of heaven? Wow. This was one of the worst nights of my life._

_This is the night you ditched us for Stanford, isn't it?_

Sam groaned. He was such a blind fool. His best memories, his "heaven" (in that fake – he hoped – heaven) was leaving. Leaving Dean behind. And Dean had seen it all.

_He wasn't the only one you got away from._

_Your heaven is bailing on your family._

_We're supposed to be a team. It's supposed to be you and me against the world, right?_

_-Dean, it is!_

_Is it?_

Sam hadn't answered. Of _course _it was. Him and his big brother. He loved Dean more than he loved anyone. If he was honest with himself. He had been enamored with Jess, liked to have her around. Liked her quirks and her silly messes. But he had never loved her with the devotion he gave his brother. No, Jess he had walked beside, Dean he would blindly follow. Dean he would die for.

The same Dean who had just left him a note. A… suicide…!

Sam leapt to his feet. "Please!" he choked, face turned to the ceiling. "Forget anything I have asked you for. Please don't let him, before I find him." He blindly dropped to his knees beside his pack and dug around frantically until his hands touched brass. He hadn't told Dean he had kept it. He probably never would.

The pendant was light in his hand, and yet strangely heavy. He couldn't let it go – their relationship – them. He would keep it safe for Dean until Dean needed it back. Clutching it to his chest like a lifeline, he reached for the keys.

"I'm sorry Dean." He cried brushing his tears away and running for the door. "I'm sorry for letting you believe I would leave again. Wait for me."

The pavement flashed under the car as she ate up the miles. Her growl matching the one in Sam's chest. Determined. Worried. Angry. Loving. This was Dean's car, of course it growled lovingly!

A sign appeared a short three miles from the motel.

_Skylore Creek Bridge – one mile. _

If Skylore Creek was a creek, Sam was a dwarf.

SPN

_Dad always said they had the perfect marriage._

_It wasn't perfect until after she died._

_It's okay, Mom. Dad still loves you. I love you, too. I'll never leave you._

_You are my little angel._

Dean clutched the rail and stared blankly through the bars at the rapids below from where he had fallen to his knees.

_I just never realized how long you've been cleaning up Dad's messes._

Dad had left. He had left his wife first, then his son.

_Then how 'bout I tell you my nightmare, Dean? The night I burned._

_Don't you walk away from me. I never loved you. You were my burden. I was shackled to you. Look what it got me. _

Yellow eyes filled Dean's mind. Slamming his fist into the bridge supports, he welcomed the sharp crack and the shooting pain.

_The worst was the smell. The pain, well. What can you say about your skin bubbling off? _

"Stop." He pleaded to the wind. All he saw was her blood across her abdomen, her womb. The same womb that had carried him, for nine months. She same womb that had sheltered his little brother long before he was able to. He gagged and coughed up bile onto the concrete.

_But the smell was so… You know, for a second I thought I'd left a pot roast burning in the oven. But… it was my meat._

"Shut-up!" he screamed clutching at his head with his mangled fist while the other still clung to the bridge.

_And then, finally, I was dead. The one silver lining was that at least I was away from you. _

"No, no nonono! You – you said I was your angel." He cried in pain.

_Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed? Mommy. Daddy. Even Sam._

He choked again.

_You ever ask yourself why? Maybe it's not them. Maybe, it's you. _

Her hateful chuckle drifted on the relentless wind – wrapping itself around his body – brushing across his clammy skin – violating him – seeping in through every pour. He let go of the rail and fell writhing to the concrete. The moon had once again hidden its face, ashamed to watch his slow destruction.

"SAM!" he screamed still trying to escape the laugh. But no, Sam was probably still asleep, or relishing in his new freedom.

_You ran away on my watch. I looked everywhere for you. I thought you were dead. And when Dad came home… _

When Dad came home. Dean could still feel the slap burning on his face. The fist to the gut had knocked him flat. The boot to his ribs, hurt like a bitch for weeks. But he deserved it, Dad said. He had messed up his most important job.

He had lost the favored one.

_Sam is clearly John's favorite! They don't _need _you! Not like you need them. _Dean stared in horror at the apparition as it morphed from his father with yellow eyes into his mother with the same…

"No…" he pleaded closing his eyes and smashing his already smashed fist into the ground. "Stop!"

"Then jump and I'll stop." A soft feminine voice purred in his ear. Ice cold fingers brushed his stomach, wrapped around from behind "Come to me. Finish it. They all leave you in the end. No one will even mourn you – us."

"I burned you!" Dean croaked crawling back towards the railing away from the ghost. She followed him relentlessly, caressing his face and jaw, one hand still settled against his hip. She traces a line across to the other hip and he shuttered in terror.

"You did, but I remained. You kept me here." She whispered biting his jaw with her frozen teeth. "You, Dean. Because of your fear. That Sammy will leave you? That's why I can't die. Not until you die. So JUMP!" she shrieked digging her hands into his chest and clutching at his lungs and heart.

An agonizing scream tore from his body and he slumped beneath her icy fingers.

"Jump, Dean. No one loves you. I wish I had never born you." He mother hissed appearing beside Nora's ghost as she released his heart. Nora hooked her thin white fingers in the waist band of his jeans and sidled up to him, cold sapping even the slightest warmth from his body and leaving him empty and dead inside.

"You are a failure. A broken soldier." He father rumbled from the other side. Nora's breath against his neck followed the same path as his mother's false laugh. He bucked away from Nora, panting harshly to escape the nightmare.

Dean rose slowly to his feet and turned to the water. He looked down – way down to the welcoming rapids. The screaming taunting memories in his head rose to an unearthly shriek as Nora rested her fingers on his neck.

"Jump. NOW!"

He closed his eyes and fell…

SPN

"DEAN!" Sammy screamed in terror diving after his brother as his body relaxed and tipped over the rail. He fingers scrambled for precious purchase on Dean's arm and drew him roughly back clutching him to his chest with a desperate strength.

"Dean. Dean – Dean." He whispered over and over in his brother's ear. "It's okay. I'm here. I'm not leaving."

"No!" Nora's ghost shrieked as she materialized in front of Sam. "You can't take him from me. You can't make him leave me!" she slammed Sam's chest and flung him back just as he shoved a fist full of salt from his pocket at her. So tight was his hold that Dean went with him on the journey through the air. Glassy green eyes flickered open as their combined bodies met the road several feet farther.

"Sam?" he whispered, he voice cracking with pain and surprise.

"Yeah. Who else would save your reckless ass?" Sammy laughed, though the tears streaming down his face conflicted with the idea of mirth.

"You didn't le- you – you looked for me – you came?" Dean gasped reaching his bloody hand up to touch Sam's face as if to make sure he was real.

"Yeah. You're stuck with me, Dean. Get used to it." But Nora cut them short as she materialized again in front of them.

"You're supposed to be dead." Sam yelled at her, scrambling back without letting up on his bone crushing grasp of his brother.

"You can't have him." She hissed.

"Hate to break it to you, but he is MY BROTHER!" Sam shouted back at her. "You don't get him!"

"You stayed." Dean whimpered against his chest.

"I'll always stay. I'm not leaving you!" Sam replied softly pressing his face against Dean's cold wet hair.

Dean sighed softly and melted into Sam's chest. Nora shrieked again, blood curdling in its magnitude, and vanished in a flash of fire. Sam laughed – fully body laughed – then he burst into tears.

"Don't ever – ever – ever do that to me again!" he pleaded, accentuating each ever with an even more crushing squeeze to his brother's body.

"You stayed." Dean replied still muffled by Sam's sweaty shirt. "Mom said you wouldn't, 'cause I'm a failure." He voice broke at the end and Sam felt his whole body tense, waiting for Sam to drop him when he remembered everything Dean was. But Sam did remember, and he was never going to let go.

"You're not a failure, Dean." Sam replied. He slid them both back until his back was propped against a bridge girder. Tilting Dean's face out of his chest and up towards his own, he was amazed how the moon rode clear and lit up Dean's face with a surreal glow. He held the glittering green eyes with his own much darker hazel ones. "You are not a failure, Dean. You gave me everything I have ever had. You raised me, fed me, and clothed me. You made sure I got to school every day. You showed me what loyalty means. Everything you ever do is to protect those around you. A failure does not do that. You saved my life so many times I couldn't begin to count, and I love you!" Sam tightened his grip and let go of everything he ever wished he could say to his hardheaded, stubborn, macho, I-don't-give-a-shit brother.

"I owe you my life since I was six month old. You died for me, went to Hell for me. Believe me Dean, wild horses couldn't drag me away."

Dean chuckled against him though the laughs were punctuated by spasming sobs. "Bitch." He whispered turning his face back into Sam.

"Jerk." Sam replied just as snarkily. "We can get up if you want." He added incase Mr. No-chick-flicks felt uncomfortable.

"Ummm... No. m'good 'ere." Dean replied settling back against his brother.

Sam couldn't help but notice how perfectly they fit against each other. Like puzzle pieces. And that is what they were. They were brothers! Two pieces of the same, seriously messed up, terribly battered, atrociously frayed and faded puzzle.

Sam smiled as Dean relaxed completely.

"You wanna tell me what happened? You scared the shit out of me when I read your note."

"Sorry. I forgot what I wrote." Dean replied avoiding the first question.

"Was it Mom? What she said in that place?" Sam gently but relentlessly pried.

Dean's chest hitched again, apparently whatever that ghost had done to his defenses, the repairs were not under construction quite yet. "Yeah, it was mom, and Dad, and – and…"

"And me?" Sam finished for him. Dean's silence answered his painful hypothesis. "Dean. Those memories aren't my heaven. That wasn't heaven. Clearly it was being manipulated against us – you. They want you to give in to them." Dean had grown still, but he was listening.

"My heaven is that time when I was four – I tripped on the sidewalk a skinned my knee up. You carried me piggy-back all the way back to the motel and put a band-aide on it. You even kissed it and made it better. My heaven is my child-self wrapped around you while you read me fairytales or comic books before bed. My heaven is being eight and sitting by you in the impala playing army guys. We carved our names on the door. We put sparkles in the back of Dad's hair."

That got Dean to chuckle and sink a little back against Sam.

"My heaven was you telling me about all Caleb's rules when it came to girls and my being grossed out and still so happy to be included in the big boy stuff. My heaven is being fourteen and knowing you had come to my debate tournament even though you were sick and Dad told you to stay home. I was so proud you saw me win. I was so happy I could hardly talk. My Heaven is you showing me how to shave at sixteen when you pretended to shave my legs. My heaven is being beside you in the impala driving from one end of nowhere to the other. My heaven is motels and shabby houses and cold nights and cheap beer and always you! My life was Hell when you were gone." Sam finished falling silent and listening to his brother breathe. "I can't lose you again." He mumbled softly

"Neither can I." Dean replied his voice cracking.

"And you won't. Promise you'll stay alive, and I'll promise I won't leave you."

"I'm sorry for this." Dean returned waving around with his free hand – his smashed had – at the bridge. "I'll stay alive."

Sam caught his hand with a startled exclamation of "What is this?"

"I – um – I was trying to – um…" Dean gestured vaguely without pulling his hand free of Sam's scrutiny.

"I can see that. Come on, it's cold out here." Sam said feeling a shiver finally wrack Dean's icy ghost frozen frame. He hauled Dean to his feet, holding fast to him until he found his balance. "You know, you left me the keys – that means I get the car now, right?"

"Bitch." Dean replied without heat. "Of course it doesn't. You would break her."

"Well, fine. But I'm driving her back to the motel. What?" he asked as Dean laughed.

"You just totally called her a _her_." He retorted as Sam helped him into the passenger seat.

"Whatever, Jerk."

SPN

"Yeah Bobby, I found him. He is fine, a little shook up over the whole thing, like me, but he is fine – yeah, you too Bobby, and thanks – I will. Bye." Sam finished his call fifteen minutes later and turned back to Dean who was staring at the mirror in a trance.

"That was Bobby." He said and _way to state the obvious there geek-boy _he imagined Dean in his head. It was disconcerting that the real him didn't at least snort. "He was worried about you – so am I – right now actually. Dean!"

"What?" Dean started and looked at him.

"Let me clean your hand."

"Yeah, okay." Dean replied.

Sam took the offered appendage and set to work, biting back his worry. His heart had almost stopped at the bridge when he found his brother.

_The gravel road threw up clouds of choking dust behind him as he tore towards the distant bridge. It was one of the old wooden kind with big wooden triangles that held it up. _

"_Dean." He breathed when he made out the writhing figure on the ground. He skidded the car to a stop at the start of the bridge when he saw Nora's ghost flanking his brother. Dean was beginning to get back to his feet. Sam was out of time. He had been out of time for days, he thought bitterly._

_He grabbed the small old black film canister they kept full of salt and shoved it into his pocket, the shot gun was in the trunk, he didn't have enough time to get it._

_As his feet pounded across the bridge he watched Nora whispering in Dean's ear. Caressing his arm in a sickening manner before she slid her hands around his waist just under his belt. _

_Sam saw red._

_Dean looked down at the water and closed his eyes. Ten more feet Sam! His body went limp and Sam's heart stopped completely as he desperately lunged forward. "Dean!" he screamed in terror reaching for his brother's arm and vaguely registering that Nora had vanished. He wrenched his brother away from the clutches of Death and crushed him in the shelter of his arms._

"_I got you, Dean. You're safe. It's okay."_

"I got you, Dean. It's okay. It's okay."

"Sammy, hey man, snap out of it." Dean weary voice brought him back to reality.

Sam blinked a few times and looked back down at the half bandaged hand. "I'm here, and there are no bridges in sight, okay? Wrap me up?"

"Um. Yeah. Sorry. I – uh – yeah. Never mind. There you're done."

"Thanks Florence." Dean mumbled. Neither one of them moved for a few minutes.

"Bed?" Sam asked eventually.

Dean turned and walked back to his bed. He was still in his Tee and sweats though the whole thing, having run off without changing. He kicked off his sneakers he rarely ever touched and sat down on the bed. It appeared that sometime on the bridge, Sam had snagged Dean duffle because it too was sitting ideally on the bed beside him.

Sam slipped off his shoes and flipped back the covers on his bed before sitting down.

"Something wrong?" he asked concerned.

"You got my bag." Dean stated thickly.

"Yep. Want me to toss it back out?" he asked and immediately after wondered if it was too early for a joke until Dean's mouth twitched.

"Nah, too hard to find another." He returned and pushed it none too gently off the foot of the bed.

"We should go to sleep." Sam reminded Dean. His brother's face was suddenly overcome by terror at the suggestion. "I – uh, I'm gonna s-sit up a while." He stuttered. Sam could have cried all over again at how small Dean seemed at the moment. So small and broken by the words of a mother he had lived his whole life to make proud.

Sam stood up and moved over to the elder's bed. "No. you're going to sleep." He said pushing his brother down on the bed and turning off the light before climbing over him and settling at his side.

"What are you doing?" Dean asked him in the darkness.

"Sleeping genius." Sam retorted easily.

"We got a room with two beds for a reason." Dean retorted.

"That was before you took up practicing the swan dive." Sam replied gently. Dean didn't retort a comment so Sam reached out and touched his arm. Like a snake, Dean's hand shot up and latched onto his sleeve. "Night Dean." Sam muttered closing his hand over Dean's wrist.

"Thanks." Dean whispered huskily into the night.

A tear did finally fall at that, and Sam drew Dean's hand to his chest and pinned it.

"I like you better alive." He whispered back.

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

And they slept.

* * *

><p>So let me know what you think, lovies.<p>

I had too much fun putting this idea into words, I'm kinda liking this add to the episodes deal. Give them a little comforting time. Hey I'm all about brothers being brothers, and they are really cute when they get clingy.

**Reviews, reviews. Feed the muse**. (her favorite diet is comments with a generous side of story ideas)

**~Kiliana**


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